Technology trends, insights and news

February 06, 2007

The Biggest Generation Gap Since the Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll

Just a few days ago, we reported the results of another Internet attitudes study that 463 did with Zogby International and the Congressional Internet Caucus. We found some pretty interesting generational divide nuggets, including:

* Only 35.6 percent of 18-24 year-olds consider someone posting a picture of them in a swimsuit to be an invasion of their privacy, compared to 65.5 percent of other respondents.

* Only 19.6 percent of 18-24 year-olds consider their dating profile to be an invasion of their privacy, compared to 54.6 percent of other respondents.

* 45.4 percent of 18-24 year-olds say they, or someone they know, has broken up with someone using email or a text message. That contrasts with just 7.6 percent of all the other age groups polled.

It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years—you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about “jungle rhythms.” Everything associated with that music and its greasy, shaggy culture felt baffling and divisive, from the crude slang to the dirty thoughts it was rumored to trigger in little girls. That musical divide has all but disappeared. But in the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk. It goes something like this:

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

(BTW, not sure why New York Magazine is suddenly the authority on generational quirks. Last year, they did the awesome and painful - for me - piece on Gen Xers who won't grow up regardless of responsibilities).

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